The Official aweSurface Test Track

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  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited August 2019

    Tested another camera angle. Gave the environment sphere default settings and added an area light for a rim effect. Found some strange noise on the collar parts, first suspected the normal maps but turned out bump was causing that noise. Normal maps on or off made no difference. Tried using displacement instead of bump and got another kind of noise with more random fireflies. Tried reducing bump strength but it really made no difference. Turning off the area light made no difference. Turning off indirect light on the environment sphere made no difference. Turning off reflections/refractions made the surface black, as it has 100% metalness with "use diffuse texture" enabled. So the only way to get rid of the noise is to skip the height maps. 8x8 ps non progressive render:

    image

    With normals and no bump:

     

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    Zeana sunset 3fixed awe.png
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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited August 2019

    I just did another car conversion, and learned something new:) Not sure if it's a bug or a feature=)

    First example, the windows use transmission with transmission scale 0.11 with a light blue color. Use face forward is disabled. Only a small part of the windows actually have color.

    image

    So after rendering this I realised use face forward was turned off, so I turned it on and the windows turned dark blue. So I adjusted the transmission scale and ended up with 0.012. And looking at the finished render I see there is some refraction going on even with thin glass enabled. Not necessarily a bad thing, but surprising=) Anyway, the use face forward version definitely looks nicer:) (And I fixed some other details as well, like the brake discs.)

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    F612 awe 2.png
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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029

    Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!

    Ok now I'm really confused!laugh I opened the girl and car scene to do some testing. First thing I did was to set the surfaces exposure back from -2 to 0. Then I set the environment exposure and gamma back to default settings (0.5/1.5 to 0/1). Testrendered, no blowouts. Reset environment settings to 0.5/1.5, still no blowouts. Even the GB brows rendered fine. So I thought what the hell and set env. sphere exposure to 2 and rendered. No blowouts. Here's a quick 8x8 progressive render with exposure 2 and gamma 2:

    Sure it's overexposed and the sunreflections on the hood are noisy, but there are no completely white areas, her face has no strange highlights, her boots are ok, the brows are dark. All metal parts are ok. What the hell? All the problems were just a glitch?

    No blowout problems then. Maybe the old ones are cached TDLmake conversions. If you quit and restart DS, they usually gets cleared out.

    As for the glass, when thin glass is enabled it will still have absorption, but no obvious refraction.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    wowie said:

    Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!

    Ok now I'm really confused!laugh I opened the girl and car scene to do some testing. First thing I did was to set the surfaces exposure back from -2 to 0. Then I set the environment exposure and gamma back to default settings (0.5/1.5 to 0/1). Testrendered, no blowouts. Reset environment settings to 0.5/1.5, still no blowouts. Even the GB brows rendered fine. So I thought what the hell and set env. sphere exposure to 2 and rendered. No blowouts. Here's a quick 8x8 progressive render with exposure 2 and gamma 2:

    Sure it's overexposed and the sunreflections on the hood are noisy, but there are no completely white areas, her face has no strange highlights, her boots are ok, the brows are dark. All metal parts are ok. What the hell? All the problems were just a glitch?

    No blowout problems then. Maybe the old ones are cached TDLmake conversions. If you quit and restart DS, they usually gets cleared out.

    As for the glass, when thin glass is enabled it will still have absorption, but no obvious refraction.

    Well, when use face forward is enabled I get refraction even with thin glass. Have to set IoR to 1 to get rid of it.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited August 2019

    Tested some overkill rendersettings, specular bounce 16, ray depth 16, diffuse bounce 6 and pixelsamples at 16x16, non progressive. Internal lights made emissive...1 hour, nice.

    image

    And I just had to try this script by mcasual https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/mcjelevate. It creates morphs from depth maps and indeed does a good job:) Took a couple of minutes to create this terrain from a primitive plane. Diffuse-, specular roughness- and displacement maps made in GIMP.

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    Dropship and terrain pp awe.png
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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited August 2019

    ...another terrain, self made height map, textures (diffuse, specular, roughness, bump, displacement, normal) from Texture Heaven, HDRI by agent unawares...

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    Sticks and Stones awe.png
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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited August 2019

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    Meteor awe.png
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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited August 2019

    ...forgot the driverlaugh

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    Meteor2 awe.png
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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    @wowie

    How is the IRay to aweSurface conversion script coming along?

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029

    @wowie

    How is the IRay to aweSurface conversion script coming along?

    You mean the one with previous store update? As far as I see, there's no more to do in that regard.

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited August 2019

    Well, when use face forward is enabled I get refraction even with thin glass. Have to set IoR to 1 to get rid of it.

    OK. I can reproduce the problem. It's probably due to some old code where I was trying to have a proper refracting glass with single normal polygons. Easily fixed.

    Post edited by wowie on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    wowie said:

    Well, when use face forward is enabled I get refraction even with thin glass. Have to set IoR to 1 to get rid of it.

    OK. I can reproduce the problem. It's probably due to some old code where I was trying to have a proper refracting glass with single normal polygons. Easily fixed.

    yes

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    wowie said:

    @wowie

    How is the IRay to aweSurface conversion script coming along?

    You mean the one with previous store update? As far as I see, there's no more to do in that regard.

    I'm probably missing something, but when selecting the figure and the surface and doubleclick the Uber to Awe script I get an error message, and nothing else happens. Copied from the log file:

        <anonymous>()@/Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE ShadingKit/Utility Presets & Scripts/AWE Transfer Uber.dsa:25
    2019-46-25 15:46:54.057 Error in script execution: /Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE ShadingKit/Utility Presets & Scripts/AWE Transfer Uber.dsa

     

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029

    I'm probably missing something, but when selecting the figure and the surface and doubleclick the Uber to Awe script I get an error message, and nothing else happens. Copied from the log file:

        <anonymous>()@/Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE ShadingKit/Utility Presets & Scripts/AWE Transfer Uber.dsa:25
    2019-46-25 15:46:54.057 Error in script execution: /Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE ShadingKit/Utility Presets & Scripts/AWE Transfer Uber.dsa

    Are you trying to run the script with the iray uber shader applied or after you've applied AWE Surface? The script should be run after applying AWE Surface.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    wowie said:

    I'm probably missing something, but when selecting the figure and the surface and doubleclick the Uber to Awe script I get an error message, and nothing else happens. Copied from the log file:

        <anonymous>()@/Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE ShadingKit/Utility Presets & Scripts/AWE Transfer Uber.dsa:25
    2019-46-25 15:46:54.057 Error in script execution: /Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE ShadingKit/Utility Presets & Scripts/AWE Transfer Uber.dsa

    Are you trying to run the script with the iray uber shader applied or after you've applied AWE Surface? The script should be run after applying AWE Surface.

    Ah, yes I tried with IRay Uber, I'll have another go, tks:)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    Here is a render using the arealight and light categories:

    image

    Hmm, the problem with this conversion is the ground, being an mdl shader mixer network with multiple diffuse overlays. Now Andrey Pestryakov was kind and generous to make a 3DL version of it:) So the plan is to use aweSurface for everything but the ground, and illuminate the ground with AoA lights, we'll see how that turns out...

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited August 2019

    Hmm, the problem with this conversion is the ground, being an mdl shader mixer network with multiple diffuse overlays.

    Nothing I can really do about Shader Mixer shaders.

    Technically, you can bake them out into a texture, then just plug the resulting output as diffuse map. Or just your own texture map.

    Now Andrey Pestryakov was kind and generous to make a 3DL version of it:) So the plan is to use aweSurface for everything but the ground, and illuminate the ground with AoA lights, we'll see how that turns out...

    Using any delta lights (spot/point/distant) is going to raise render times considerably. I'd recommend using the freebie point/spot/distant light I made instead, since you can use light linking with them. Basically, set them up so they will not light any AWE Surface applied materials. They will still light Shader Mixer 3delight shaders. Never tried such a scenario though, it's all path traced area lights for me.

    Btw,

    Left : Current Hotfix. Right : Next Update.

    The original color/spec texture have some noise applied. This is without any diffuse/spec texture. The update is slower, but not by much. In this example it's 4 min 44.93 secs compared to 3 min 59.67 secs. 8x8 pixel samples, 1024 irradiance samples.

    specnoise.jpg
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    no specnoise.jpg
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    Post edited by wowie on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited August 2019
    wowie said:

    I'm probably missing something, but when selecting the figure and the surface and doubleclick the Uber to Awe script I get an error message, and nothing else happens. Copied from the log file:

        <anonymous>()@/Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE ShadingKit/Utility Presets & Scripts/AWE Transfer Uber.dsa:25
    2019-46-25 15:46:54.057 Error in script execution: /Users/Shared/My DAZ 3D Library/Shader Presets/wowie/AWE ShadingKit/Utility Presets & Scripts/AWE Transfer Uber.dsa

    Are you trying to run the script with the iray uber shader applied or after you've applied AWE Surface? The script should be run after applying AWE Surface.

    Ah, yes I tried with IRay Uber, I'll have another go, tks:)

    Yup it works if you convert to awe first. Tried to find some info on what the script actually does... ahem...simply put, why would I want to use it? blush

    wowie said:

    Hmm, the problem with this conversion is the ground, being an mdl shader mixer network with multiple diffuse overlays.

    Nothing I can really do about Shader Mixer shaders.

    Technically, you can bake them out into a texture, then just plug the resulting output as diffuse map. Or just your own texture map.

    Now Andrey Pestryakov was kind and generous to make a 3DL version of it:) So the plan is to use aweSurface for everything but the ground, and illuminate the ground with AoA lights, we'll see how that turns out...

    Using any delta lights (spot/point/distant) is going to raise render times considerably. I'd recommend using the freebie point/spot/distant light I made instead, since you can use light linking with them. Basically, set them up so they will not light any AWE Surface applied materials. They will still light Shader Mixer 3delight shaders. Never tried such a scenario though, it's all path traced area lights for me.

    Good call, will try that;)

    wowie said:

    Btw,

    Left : Current Hotfix. Right : Next Update.

    The original color/spec texture have some noise applied. This is without any diffuse/spec texture. The update is slower, but not by much. In this example it's 4 min 44.93 secs compared to 3 min 59.67 secs. 8x8 pixel samples, 1024 irradiance samples.

    Nice, much cleaner loookingyes

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029

    Yup it works if you convert to awe first. Tried to find some info on what the script actually does... ahem...simply put, why would I want to use it? blush

    I should copy values/textures from some of iray uber's settings to their respective equivalent on AWE Surface, ie Metallicity to Metalness etc.

    Nice, much cleaner loookingyes

    Found a way to minimize the render time penalty. Should be only just around 10% longer. In that example, it's about 20 secs improvement.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    wowie said:

    Yup it works if you convert to awe first. Tried to find some info on what the script actually does... ahem...simply put, why would I want to use it? blush

    I should copy values/textures from some of iray uber's settings to their respective equivalent on AWE Surface, ie Metallicity to Metalness etc.

    Tks, I'll test it some more!

    wowie said:

    Nice, much cleaner loookingyes

    Found a way to minimize the render time penalty. Should be only just around 10% longer. In that example, it's about 20 secs improvement.

    The difference is well worth a 10% time penalty IMO:)

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/intrinsic_types/renderman_shading_language_objects      

    Not strictly related to aweSurface, but I got this link, and since every piece of info about RSL or 3DL is valuable, I'll add it to my opening post;) Guess I still have this dream about learning some basic coding some day...

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited August 2019

    ...testing some stuff for the Medieval Lands scene;)

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    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
  • @wowie

    Any news about the upcoming commercial update? Face Without Mouth emoticon

     

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited September 2019

    Any news about the upcoming commercial update? Face Without Mouth emoticon

    While testing the current release build, I saw some SSS fireflies with dark skin when translucency boost is enabled. So I need to figure out what's causing that.

    Also, I did some more tweaking to the specular and SSS.

    Ashihkmin Shirley specular roughness values will be slightly different.It will resemble GGX more closely. I still need to test out how it fully behave though.

    Left : Ashihkmin Shirley. Right : GGX.

    If you're a fan of GGX like mustakettu, the updated specular/reflection code have cleared up specular/reflection render noise. I'd still recommend the default Ashihkmin Shirley though, mostly due to render times. Plus, GGX on specular/reflection combined with transmission (glass) produces fireflies and darker refraction.

    Subsurface now has dynamic subsurface scale. It will vary scale between half and twice of the value you're using, with surface luminance as the driver. Shallow color also have been changed, so you'll get full strength (white) on high luminance (directly lit) areas and the diffuse texture/albedo values on dark areas. This makes translucency in backscattering pop more.

    So expect some render-visibile changes to those two. The specular will likely be more noticeable than the subsurface stuff.

    Oh yeah, I've been working on a bump / roughness LOD. Basically, the shader will dynamically adjust bump strength to a certain extent, depending on how close the surface is to the camera. In theory, micro details from bump will be visible on closeups without manually adjusting bump strength. The dynamically adjusted bump also affects roughness, so to maintain the same overall look regardless of camera distance, roughness will be automatically adjusted as well. This is still experimental at this point though. It may or may not end up on the shader or at least as an exposed parameter.

    But mostly, I've been chipping away at this:

    Left to right : 20% roughness and 60% roughness with area light lighting. 20% roughness with HDRI lighting.

    There's some render noise I still need to figure out, plus I have an idea about doing glints. The hair shader now does actually gradient opacity (not just on/off), with some new opacity optimization tricks that will also come to AWE Surface.

    The strand variations are mostly due to procedural roughness variations along with opacity values. You shouldn't need to use specular strength textures to get spec details. Also avoids those baked highlights vendors have on those textures.

    The shader will likely only properly work with DS 4.8  and up, since newer 3delight builds used by 4.8 have fixes to the 3delight hair shadeops.

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    Post edited by wowie on
  • Tks a lot wowie for keeping us updated:) As I have suspected, the new release will be major, I really keep my fingers crossed that you can pull off all those new features;)

    So I decided to take a break with a couple of conversion projects I have in the pipeline...trying to improve my REYES skills with animation for a change. Still having wet dreams about getting to use the cloud render with aweSurface:)

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029

    So I decided to take a break with a couple of conversion projects I have in the pipeline...trying to improve my REYES skills with animation for a change. Still having wet dreams about getting to use the cloud render with aweSurface:)

    Thanks. Right now that's not possible. 3delight NSI/Cloud only works with NSI and OSL, 3Delight 12 is the last version that works with both (though you can't mix them in a scene).

    I'll eventually port AWE Surface to OSL, since outside of some leftover stuff (normal mapping) and some other stuff I wanted to incorporate, the shader is pretty 'final'. Probably once the Houdini plugin is available.

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029
    edited September 2019

    Testing some ideas for layering/mask.

    14 min 42.93 secs

    I've also solved most of the issues with the hair shader.

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    Post edited by wowie on
  • wowie said:

    Testing some ideas for layering/mask.

     

    14 min 42.93 secs

    I've also solved most of the issues with the hair shader.

    Tks for the teaser:)

  • wowiewowie Posts: 2,029

    Hey Sven,

    Just might be worth looking into AWE Hair shader. I've posted links on the 3delight laboratory thread. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/55128/3delight-laboratory-thread-tips-questions-experiments/p97

    It's still a work-in-progress, but I think it's useable enough for the masses.

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    edited September 2019
    wowie said:

    Hey Sven,

    Just might be worth looking into AWE Hair shader. I've posted links on the 3delight laboratory thread. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/55128/3delight-laboratory-thread-tips-questions-experiments/p97

    It's still a work-in-progress, but I think it's useable enough for the masses.

    Yeah I saw the post, will post some feedback for sureyes

    Post edited by Sven Dullah on
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